Developing a project at the intersection of comics and digital humanities has long been on my radar. I’m lucky to have a community of scholars at MSU to collaborate with to develop this project. Comics as Data: North America (CaDNA) is a Collections as Data project drawn from Michigan State University Library (MSUL) Comic Art Collection. The project utilizes MSUL catalog metadata about North America comics in the Comic Art Collection. MSUL is home to the world’s largest publicly accessible comic book collection and this project seeks to develop the catalog metadata as a corpus to explore the production, content, and creative communities linked to comics in North America. The project team members include Julian Chambliss (Department of English), Devin Higgins (Digital Library Programmer, MSU Library), Kate Topham (Digital Humanities Archivist, CAL), Kristen Mapes (Asst. Dir. DH, CAL), Ranti Junus (Systems Librarian, MSU Library) and Scout Calvert (Data Librarian, MSU Library). Learn more about MSUL datasets here. The current work linked to CaDNA is pursued within the Graphic Possibilities Research Workshop (GPRW) in the Department of English. You can find the latest information about CaDNA by visiting the GPRW website.
CaDNA Wikidata-Edit-a-thon
Building on our ongoing collaborative project examining library catalog data, CaDNA is investigating linked data opportunities offered by MSU Library Special Collection Comic Art Collection. Working in conjunction with the Department of English, Graphic Possibilities Research Workshop and Digital Humanities and Literary Cognition Lab (DHLC), this Wikidata project seeks to address gaps in the digital record. This project will link Wikidata groups across the country together in a coordinated effort to update entries linked to comics.
October 2023: 50 States of Data
In partnership with our colleagues at the University of Illinois Library, we utilized a Comics as Data North America (CaDNA) dataset to explore comic publishing in Illinois.
October 2022: Enriching Wikidata: Golden Age and BIPOC Comic Characters
This event focus on exploring BIPOC characters in the CaDNA dataset.
October 2021: The Second World
On October 21st and 22nd, CaDNA hosted its second Wikidata Event. In year two, we continued our focus on a collaborative online process to examine library catalog data to explore the geographies of publishing and library collecting policies in North American comics.
October 2020: The Golden Age
On October 8th and 9th 2020, CaDNA hosted over 50 academics across fifteen institutions in a synchronous event examining golden age comics. The event resulted in more than 5,000 items edited across all participants.
Learn about Mix’n’ Match by watching this tutorial by Kate Topham.
Presentations
Visualization Sandbox
As a part of the CaDNA, I’m using Flourish to create visualizations. Flourish is a web-based tool that allows you to upload your data to create visualizations using a menu of data templates. Examine the video of my workshop at Indiana University to learn more about the benefits of Flourish. I continue to parse the data to create the visualization. Some examples of those experiments are below. Always keep in mind, the visualization is the beginning of the story.
